Hab & Gut (The Rich and the Good)

The Rich and the Good is the English version of Hab & Gut. I’m going to refer to the game as Hab & Gut, not because I’m being pretentious, but because I’ve always heard of it being referred to in the original German name. Also it’s a much shorter name to type. This is a game of commodity price manipulation, insider information and making donations. You are an investor (well, to be totally honest you are a profiteer) making money from stocks, and you are also expected to be a philanthropist. You win by being the richest, but if you do the least charity work, you are removed from contention. So yes you want to make money, but you must also make sure you give away enough of it so as not to be the smallest donor.  This is a tricky balance. 

There are six commodities in the game. The card deck contains cards which cause their values to go up or down. There are more cards which increase the values, so generally the market goes up. Every game only a subset of cards will be played. They are put on racks, and each rack is placed between two players. You can only see the cards on the two racks immediately next to you. You know these cards will be played. You share some information with the neighbour on your left, and some other information with the neighbour on your right. 

There are two stages in every round. In the first stage you buy or sell shares. Shares are limited in quantity and they do run out. In the second stage you manipulate share prices by playing cards. You pick one card each from the two racks next to you. One card is applied in full, but for the other you only apply half the effect. Halving the effect can mean reducing the growth, or cushioning the fall. All the cards on all racks will eventually be played. It is only a matter of time and whether the effect is reduced. 

The game is about buying low and selling high. Information is power. Although you can half the effect of some cards, this is not your most powerful weapon. You can try to guess whether share prices will go up or down based on the actions of your opponents. How players share some common information is interesting. You have a bit more information when you try to analyse what your neighbours are thinking. The donation part of the game is a game of chicken. Giving money away is in direct contradiction of your winning criteria, i.e. money. Yet if you donate the least, you will not even qualify to compete. There is a mid game checkpoint where you can see how much everyone has donated so far. One challenging aspect about the donations is they are made using shares, not cash. That means after you make a donation, the value can change. This adds some unpredictability. Donations also affect the availability of shares in the market. 

Cash flow is very important. You need cash in hand to be able to invest and that is the only way you make more money. Without cash, you cannot grab opportunities. So sometimes you have to sell some shares, even if they have not made you much money yet, if you believe there will be other shares with higher potential. You must watch your opponents closely.  Their actions will give you clues about the insider information they have. 

Hab & Gut has several clever ideas, and they are well implemented in a no-fuss manner. I think that is admirable.

Merry Christmas

 

Wine Cellar

Wine Cellar is a very pretty game. It is about collecting bottles of wine. Throughout the game you will collect a stack of 8 bottles, and at the end of the game you score points to see who wins. 

You start the game with a hand of 8 cards. You use them for simultaneous bidding, and the number in the top left corner is the strength of your card. Every round there will be a number of cards at the centre of the table equal to the number of players, and everyone will get to claim one. The order in which you claim these cards is determined by blind bidding. Everyone plays a card from hand at the same time. Whoever has the highest number goes first. After all the cards from the current round are claimed, those cards played from hand become the cards for the next round. 

As you collect bottles of wine, you must place them horizontally and stack them like this. A new bottle can be added at the top of the stack or at the bottom, but never inserted in the middle. When the game ends, you score every bottle based on those numbers on the bottle label. For the first bottle at the top, you score the first number. In this example above, only 1 point. For the second bottle, you score the second number (in this example, an 8), and so on. If you look at this photo above, I score the full 8 points for every bottle except for the first and third. Theme-wise this means I have a pretty good collection of wine and if I drink these in this order, they would have aged almost perfectly by the time I get to each bottle. 

During game setup you draw two client cards and must pick one. They give you bonus points based on wine type and origin country. These are additional factors to consider when you pick wine. 

If you look at those labels, these are all real wines.

Even the card back is very nice.

The core mechanism is simple. Every round you analyse which cards are most helpful to you. If any is particularly important, you need to consider playing a high card to try to secure it. At the same time you should also watch which kind of wines your opponents are trying to collect. If the one you want is not attractive to any of them, you might not need to play a high card. If you happen to hold in hand a wine which is very good for you, you can deliberately plan to play it one round, then win it the next. When stacking your bottles, my gut feel is it is better to start in the middle, so that you can add bottles to either the top or the bottom throughout the game. This gives you a bit more flexibility. I might be making the game sound rather complex, with so many aspects to consider, but this really is a simple game. It works pretty well whether you go to these lengths to do your analysis. You can definitely play it in a relaxed manner. That was what I did. This works very well as a casual game. You can easily teach non-gamers to play. For gamers this is a decent filler. 

Diamonds

Diamonds is a trick-taking game for 2 to 6 players. The basic rules are the same as standard trick-taking games. You must follow suit if you can, and the highest card in the lead suit wins the trick. There is no trump suit. What's special about this game is the suit powers. There are four suits in the game, and the cards are numbered 1 to 15. 

The theme is jewellers. Each player has his own jewellery shop and vault, and you can place diamonds at both places. The difference between putting diamonds at your shop or your vault is diamonds at your shop might get stolen by your opponents. When the game ends, diamonds in your shop are worth 1pt each, and those in your vault are 2pts each. Everyone can see how many diamonds are at your shop, but the amount in your vault is secret. 

The winner of a trick gets to perform the action associated with the lead suit. It the suit is diamond, you earn a diamond and put it directly in your vault. If it is heart, you earn a diamond at your shop. If spade, you move a diamond from shop to vault. If club, you steal a diamond from the shop of a specific player. One interesting rule is if you are unable to follow suit and must play a card off suit, you get to perform the action associated with the card you play. So not being able to follow suit is a good thing. You won't win the trick, but you get to do something. At the end of a round, you compare your cards won and see who has the most cards in each suit. The winners get to perform an action associated with the suit. So you do want to win tricks. 

There is a victim marker which gets passed around. Whenever anyone steals, they steal from the player holding the marker, and then the marker is passed left. If you steal when the marker is with you, you lose nothing. You just pass the marker to the next person. 

Diamonds is a pretty conventional trick-taking game, so it will be easy to teach non-gamers. The tactics are similar to traditional trick-taking games, and they will be able to play competently quickly. Mike Fitzgerald is the designer of the Mystery Rummy series which I greatly enjoy. Diamonds is built on top of a traditional game, but it adds some fun ideas, turning a traditional game into something new. It is a game that can be played in a light-hearted manner, but it does offer some strategic depth. 

Burst

Burst is a light card game that can be described as group Black Jack. That’s just like my game Pinocchio, but in Pinocchio the cards are hidden. In Burst you can see all the cards played. 

On your turn you either draw a card or play a card to the centre of the table. You have a hand size of three, so if you have three cards, you must play one. Cards in hand are your points. They are scored only at the end of the round, and you score points only if you do not go bust. Going bust means playing a card that makes the total on the table go beyond 21. This only happens when you have three cards and you are forced to play a card. Having three high cards in hand is good, but only if you don’t go bust. 

The card distribution is wide. There are many 1’s and 0’s. There are some cards from 2 to 10. The big cards go up to 15, but there are few of them.  There are some negative numbers. 

Some cards have special powers, for example allowing you to remove another card from the pool, to take a card into your hand, or to reverse the order of play. 

When anyone goes bust, the round ends and they score nothing. Everyone else scores according to their cards in hand. People will tend to be greedy and want to keep the high cards. However taking a third card always comes with risk. When you have two high cards, it is hard to resist drawing your third card because you cannot bear to part with a high card. Yet if you go bust all is for naught. 

In this game you have plenty of opportunities to hurt your opponents. The card distribution and card powers help players push the total to 21 or near 21. If the next player has three cards and doesn’t have a small enough card to play, he is doomed. There will be unexpected twists of fate. An untimely reverse can kill some players. Sometimes several players with three cards can survive a high total because they have 0’s, negative cards, or cards with powers. 

In the first game I played, the game felt draggy because we scored low every round. I felt the winning score should be 50 and not 100. Only in my second game I realised it was possible to score quite high. So 100 feels right. You can always choose a lower target if you want to make the game shorter. I think this is a wonderful game. Simple, exciting, and full of surprises. 

Pick the next Cili Padi title

I would like to hear your opinion.

Since 2022, Cili Padi Games has been publishing one game per year. My idea is to do this once a year to gradually build up my product line and my brand. However I also remind myself that my goal is to focus on being a designer, not a publisher. If I am able to pitch a to a publisher successfully, I would happily play the role of designer only. So far I have published Dancing Queen, Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Pinocchio. I am partnering with Specky Studio (with them being the publisher) to release Malaysian Holidays and Rebels of the Three Kingdoms. Malaysian Holidays will be out early 2026, in conjunction with Visit Malaysia Year. Most of the work is done now. Publishing work has not started for Rebels, but we are hoping to release it in 2026 too. What I am working on now is what to release under my own Cili Padi Games in 2026. 

Art from Malaysian Holidays

At the moment I have three candidates: Math Dice, Apa You Cakap and Bet West. I'll briefly explain each of them and my considerations, but before I do that I want to talk about Rebels. This is because it is representative of the style of Cili Padi titles. Since I am trying to build a brand, I should have a consistent style. At least that's what I think now. The Cili Padi style is small box card games. My games feature important hidden information, double guessing among players, and players trying to mislead others or outright lying to them. I think my 2026 game should be something like this too. I'm not 100% sure this is the best strategy or a necessary one. For now this seems to be the sensible thing to do. 

In Rebels of the Three Kingdoms your character powers are secret, and without knowing for sure who has what power, you have to decide who to form a team with. The reason I came up with this design is I wanted to turn typical social deduction games upside down. In games like Werewolf and Secret Hitler, you don't know who is on which team and you spend much effort figuring that out. In Rebels, you openly decide whose team you want to be on. 

This is not a team game though. This is still very much every person for himself. New teams are formed every round. Your friend today might be your enemy tomorrow. Your team is but a tool for achieving your personal goal. I know this sounds rather negative, but hey this is just a game. Please don't be like this in real life. 

The gameplay of Rebels is very much in the vein of other Cili Padi games. Three Kingdoms is not a fairly tale, but it is a historical story, so that's close enough. Specky Studio specialises in educational games. Rebels is a good fit for their product line because Three Kingdoms is history, and literature too. The game mechanism reflects that era of every lord for himself and shifting alliances. 

Let's talk about Math Dice. I started designing this with the intention to pitch to corporates which might want to have a boardgame as merchandise or as a premium gift. This is an educational game and a mass market game. Something parents would want to buy for their children, and schools would want to use as a learning tool. 

There are three types of dice. The blue and yellow have numbers while the white has operators. What you need to do in the game is to use dice to make valid equations. There are some rules for the die faces. The 6 and 9 are interchangeable. So are the 1 and the minus sign. Multiplication and addition signs are not interchangeable. Multiplication is red and addition is black. Using this photo above, what are the equations you can think of? The more dice you want to include in an equation the harder it will be. Let's look at some example solutions.

5 x 6 = 30

16 x 5 = 80

18 x 5 = 90

(36 x 5) / 1 = 180

In the first version of Math Dice, after the dice are rolled, players study the dice together and race to pick up cards. If you find a way to create an equation using six dice, you pick up the card showing 6 dice. Later on you will need to prove it by arranging the dice. In case you can't do it or you have forgotten how to do it, you will be penalised. You take the NO card if you think it is impossible to make any equation with the dice rolled. If no one is able to make any equation, this will be the only card which scores. If you are able to make an equation with all the dice rolled, you take the SUPER card. This is the highest scoring card. That card showing three 9's is just a reminder that whenever you manage an equation with a three digit number, you score 2 points. 

I am going to change how this game works. During playtesting, I found that players often had difficulty remembering their equations. So they needed pen and paper to write them down. Now I want to make pen and paper part of the game. You need to write down as many equations as you can within a time limit. Every correct equation gives you 1 point. For a specific number of dice, if you are the only person who manages an equation, you will score bonus points.

Of my three candidates, I think this one has the lowest chance of being selected to be my next game. It is very different from the Cili Padi style. It has the educational game vibes, which I worry is rather out of place compared to the rest of my product line. I don't know the educational games market well, and I don't feel confident about marketing an educational game. On the other hand, doing something different might present new opportunities. This game might create inroads to new markets. This is not the kind of game that old gamers play, and because of that I have difficulty convincing myself to release it under Cili Padi Games. It's my instinct and I know it's wrong. Publishing games is not about making games you like, it is about making games your target audience wants. 

The second candidate is Apa You Cakap, which is a phrase mixing Malay and English. It means "What are you saying?" This was inspired by multilingual Malaysia. The first language you speak with a friend will often become the default language you speak, even if you later find out that you both know another language and you are both more fluent in that. When I went to Penang for the Asian Board Games Festival, Jon, Jia Xian and I were in the same car, and while Jia Xian and I spoke Mandarin, and Jia Xian and Jon spoke Mandarin too, when Jon and I spoke to each other, we used English. All three of us spoke Mandarin, but since English was the first language Jon and I conversed in, it became our default. Imagine this three way conversation with a mix of Mandarin of English, and none of us finding it unusual or unnatural. That's Malaysia. 

There are six Malaysian languages in the game. To win the game you need to be able to chat with everyone using their preferred language, all within the same turn. Let's translating that to game mechanism - your conversation partner shows a language card, and you must be able to show that same language from your hand too. During the game there are ways to find out what languages the other players speak. This game requires some memorisation. 

In the game you have a secret crush. If he or she wins, you win too. This creates some collaboration among the players, but this isn't a cooperative game nor is it a team game. If you happen to be the secret crush of your secret crush then yes, as luck would have it, you are effectively a two-person team. 

I started working on this game because I wanted to create something which showcases an aspect of being Malaysian. I wanted a game which Malaysians can relate to, and at the same time if marketed overseas, a unique aspect about Malaysia can become the hook. I have never published a Malaysian themed game before. This is something outside of my comfort zone. Perhaps it also means this is a new opportunity.

Apa You Cakap still needs many rounds of playtesting. The core loop isn't settled yet and I am still experimenting. Initially I was a little doubtful about this design. The premise is interesting, but I was worried I couldn't come up with an interesting mechanism. Now that I have tested this several times, I am starting to see the fun elements surfacing. I am still making big changes. I am hopeful this can be developed into a game worth publishing, whether under Cili Padi Games or under other labels. 

When I make game prototypes I now use cards from the One Piece card game. Younger daughter Chen Rui bought a ton of cards cheap. She doesn't actually play the game but she is a fan of One Piece. She collects the cards because of that. There are many cards she didn't want, so I asked her to give them to me. I can save some money buying poker cards.

The third game I am considering is Bet West. This is the revitalised Saikoyu. It is a gambling game with a Journey of the West theme pasted on. I submitted Saikoyu to a game design competition some time ago, and it didn't even make it past the first round. The feedback I received was that there was too little basis for players to make meaningful decisions. The judges suggested I take a look at Coyote. I do think players don't have enough control, which translates to a poor experience. 

Bet West uses the same concept as Hanabi. You can see everyone's cards but not your own. You have only one card. Every round the player with the highest card wins. The largest number is 13, and the smallest is 1. Cards numbered 4, 8, and 10 trigger special conditions when in play. For example when 4 is in play, the smallest card wins instead. If 8 is in play, all odd numbers become zero. With these quirks thrown in, it is not easy to guess your odds of winning.

In Saikoyu, everyone proposes a bet amount, and the bet used for the round will be the second highest amount. The basis for guessing your own number is how other players propose their bet amounts. What they propose is a reflection of what they see. You can use that to guess your own number. However players generally still feel they have too little control. So I have now made some changes. 

I now make the game a bit more like poker. You will have to pay an ante every round, but you will not be forced to lose a huge sum when multiple other players want to go big. You can Fold and just lose the small ante. I have added a Raise mechanism. You can Raise to try to bluff, and to see your opponents' reactions. Whether they Call or Fold gives you clues as to what your card might be. I've added a Side Bet mechanism. This is also a way to get hints about what your card is. When you propose a Side Bet against another player, you state the bet amount. If the other player accepts, this Side Bet will only be resolved at the end of the round. However if they decline, they must pay you half the bet amount immediately. So you see this can be a way for you to bluff too. 

The Guanyin card (Goddess of Mercy) is a powerful and disruptive one. It allows you to discard you card and draw a new one. Obviously this can completely turn things upside down. There is only one such card in the game. 

The theme is completely pasted on. In fact I feel a little guilty pasting this story related to Buddhism onto a gambling game. I do think using themes already familiar to people is useful. It is something that attracts people and gives people a sense of familiarity. It creates a better play experience. Now that I think about it, maybe the 8 should not be Tang Sanzang (Tripitaka) and should be Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) instead. After all the 8 (Ba) is literally in his name. 

The style of Bet West is consistent with Cili Padi Games. There is critical information which is hidden, and there are ways you can try to figure it out. There is double guessing among players, and opportunities to bluff and lie. 

Which do you think should be the next Cili Padi Games title? Math Dice, Apa You Cakap, or Bet West? Please comment below and share your reasoning. 

Super Fantasy Brawl

Super Fantasy Brawl is a 2-player game in which you control a team of three fighters and you go head to head against the opponent team in a grand arena decorated with three statues.  You don’t fight to the death. Instead you race to score points. Fighters don’t die. They respawn at the deployment zone. You score points by knocking out enemy fighters and by completing challenges, which are mostly related to controlling specific areas in the arena. Challenges can only be claimed at the start of your turn. You must not only capture the required positions, you must also hold on to them till your next turn. 

Every fighter you add to your team comes with a set of cards. These cards form your deck. Every turn you draw five cards, and you have one each of red, blue and yellow mana to spend to activate cards. Unused cards are discarded and you will draw five new cards. Each card belongs to a specific fighter and can only be used for them. Fighters can move, melee attack, range attack, pull or push other fighters, heal, and so on. If your cards don’t suit you, you can spend mana on basic actions, for example moving two steps. 

Whenever attacked, you have the option to respond. You can spend mana and cards which are meant for your next turn. However this also means you will do less when your turn comes. 

Challenges operate like a sushi belt. They march across a display, moving one step per round. When they first appear they cannot be claimed. Then their value will go from 1 point to 2 points, and eventually back to 1 point again before they disappear because they are not claimed. You have to choose which challenges to attempt, and ideally you time your moves so that you score 2 points instead of 1. 

The fighters have different personalities and strengths. There is no restriction to how you build your team. Teams are drafted at the start of the game. There are plenty of combinations you can play with. 

I played this on BoardGameArena.com. The physical game has pretty miniatures and looks much better than the digital implementation. I’m not really a tactical battle game guy, so I didn’t find the game interesting. This is a game about knowing your fighters well and making the best out of what you draw. Fighters can complement and support one another, fully utilising their unique abilities. 

Photo from boardgamegeek.com

Flatiron

The Flatiron building is a famous landmark in New York, well-known for its triangular shape. When I first saw the name, I thought it was rather weird because I thought it was pronounced as "fla-tee-ron". Only after I saw the Chinese name I realised this name was "flat" and "iron" combined. I feel dumb now. This is a 2-player game about constructing the Flatiron building. You are builders working on this skyscraper. When the project is completed, you compare points to see who wins. 

Game setup

There are four main streets surrounding the construction site. A stack of cards is set up at each street. The game uses a worker placement mechanism. These four streets and the city council are the five spots you can place your worker. Each player has only one worker. On your turn you must move him to a new spot to perform an action. 

This is your player board. It is divided into four columns. These four columns correspond to the four streets. When you visit a street, you can buy the top card there, or you can execute the actions on your player board matching that street. When you buy cards, you can tuck them below or above your player board, depending on whether you want to use the top half or bottom half of the card. This augments the actions available at your player board. Every column can have at most 3 cards added. You can't remove cards, so you have to think carefully when you add cards. When you execute actions at a particular column on your player board, you always go from top to bottom. The dark coloured cards are not action cards. They are scoring cards which will only be evaluated at the end of the game. 

Those coloured circles on your player board are your storage for the four types of pillars. Each storage space can store just one pillar in one specific colour. You need pillars for constructing the building. At each level of the building you'll need to build three pillars of different colours before you can build the next floor.

Actions you can perform in the game include buying pillars, selling pillars, building pillars, building floors, making money, and exchanging pillars. The player boards for the two players are different. The pillar costs and action positions differ.

Every floor has a unique rule. This rule takes effect when the floor is the topmost visible floor. In the photo above, the floor-specific rule is whoever visits the red street (5th Avenue) earns $1. There are three positions on a floor for building pillars. Some of them give specific rewards. The act of building pillars gives you points. The more expensive that pillar is, the more points you'll score. 

The player workers block each other. You often want to deliberately deny your opponent if you see there is something he wants to get or do. 

This is the scoring board. Whenever the leading player reaches a multiple of 10, he collects two newspapers from the paper boy (the white pawn), and the paper boy jumps to the next multiple of 10. Newspapers are single-use special powers. The leading player keeps one and gives the other to the trailing player.

Some cards that you buy affect your reputation. At the end of the game, your reputation is evaluated independently for each of the four columns at your player board. You get a bonus if the column sum is positive, or a penalty if it is negative. This is another consideration when you purchase cards. Yet another consideration is that you can only have one dark card per column.

This is a very Euro strategy game. You must plan to upgrade your player board because this makes your actions more powerful. You will be able to do more within a single turn. This is the interesting part of the game. You can augment your abilities differently from game to game. You try to build effective combos. And all this is happening at the same time as you are trying to construct the Flatiron building as efficiently as possible. This is a two player game that does not feel like a two player game. I wonder whether it was originally designed as a multiplayer game, but during development they found that it worked mostly as a two player game, and then decided to make it so. 

I played with Jetta at Board Game Station, which is in Fo Tan, Hong Kong.